Baby Please Don't Go: A Novel

by Frank Freudberg

“But,” Natalie said, “he has every advantage. That’s what the fake complaint to your agency is really about. To screw me. He doesn’t play fair—reading my email, having people follow me. But I’m expected to stick to the rules.”

  “Expected by whom?”

  She didn’t have a ready answer for that. She hesitated. “By me…I guess. And I’ll get nothing. And the kids will be with a guy who doesn’t really care about them, isn’t involved with them, barely knows them. I deserve half of what he’s worth, but I’ll take forty percent to get it over with.”

  Lock raised his eyebrows. “Why would he fight you?” he asked. “You say he’s worth thirty or forty million. How many steaks can a man eat?”

  “He doesn’t care what it costs. All he wants is the win. And all I want is a quick out-of-court settlement so I can move on and focus on taking care of the girls. Like I said, not even fifty-fifty. I’m not unreasonable.”

  The phone rang and Natalie ignored it. “Candice told me her parents had a nasty custody fight when she was in elementary school,” she said. “She says what’s important to husbands and wives might not matter to a judge, but things you think are too petty to bring up in court, judges might consider crucial. So I don’t know what to think or what to do.”

  “That’s true. Judges view testimony and evidence subjectively. You never know what will resonate with them.”

  “I’m a vegetarian and I raise my girls that way,” said Natalie. “But when Witt’s alone with the girls, I know for a fact he feeds them meat. To spite me. Would a judge care about that?”

  “I doubt it. Yesterday, you mentioned you suspect that your husband drives with the kids in the car while under the influence of alcohol,” Lock said. “A judge would certainly care about that. But if you know your husband is drinking and you let him drive them, you’re complicit. Next time you think he’s DUI, call the police. Get it on record. You’re allowed to build a case, too.”

  “All summer long, he dropped them at the pool at the club,” said Natalie. “He had Candice watch them and then he played golf, got loaded, picked them up, and drove them home.”

  Lock made another note and put his pen down. “There you go. That’s an example of what plays well in court. A judge won’t like hearing that. But then again, there’s a flip side. You just described a guy who’s very involved with his children. A judge may care more about that than the drinking. It’s tricky. That’s why you need a lawyer.”

  “He did have a fender-bender a few months ago. While drunk. But he didn’t even get a ticket—and now a Brandywine Township cop has 76ers season tickets. Our tickets.”

  Lock picked up his pen again and made another note. She watched him. “Were the kids with him then?”

  “No.”

  “He gave a police officer your basketball tickets to tear up the DUI? I don’t know. Bribing a cop…that happens on TV a lot more than in reality.”

  “All I know is he bragged about it that night. Remember, he wants to win, he doesn’t care what it costs. Now that the bribe could come back to bite him, he told me he was kidding about the whole thing. I called the captain of the police department a couple of weeks ago and he blew me off. Said I didn’t know the date of the accident or the name of the cop, and that no officer of his would even think about doing something like that. Then when he asked if Witt and I weren’t getting along, I hung up on him. Meanwhile, we haven’t been to a basketball game all year.”

  She fidgeted, breathing deeply. She glanced at him, then looked down. “Calling the police on him when he’s driving drunk is a great idea,” she said. “Thanks for that.”

  “Don’t thank me. I’m not on your side or your husband’s side—”

  “I know you have to be fair, Lock. But I know you’re on my side,” she said, smiling and looking down.

  Lock smiled and sighed, then put his game face back on. “The only side I’m on is the children’s. Be smart. Don’t let him take the children when he’s intoxicated just so you can call the police on him. It’s your responsibility to make sure your children are safe at all times. No exceptions, no games. If he’s as bad as you say he is, he’ll give you plenty of opportunities to get him in trouble.”

  “I never thought to call the police,” she said.

  “Really?” He met her eyes. The sun shined through the solarium’s glass ceiling. He squinted.

  “It’s like...I don’t want to be Witt, you know? He’s a world-class manipulator. No matter what’s going on, he’s looking for an advantage. When he suggested we handle the divorce ourselves, it seemed like the logical thing to do. Otherwise, what? I’d have to spend every minute trying to screw him over. Who wants to live like that?”

  Lock shrugged and looked down at his notes. “I understand, but Natalie, now’s the time for you to start thinking like that. You have an idea of what’s best for your children, and you need to start acting on it. Like I said, make notes, report things that put your kids at risk, build a case.”

  “Or maybe it’s that I’m too gullible,” she said. She got up and plucked a dead leaf from the stem of a magnificent sapphire-blue orchid. “I hear you. Now I feel guilty. I’ve been trying to take the easy way out, and that’s not good for the kids, either.”

  “Being a parent, it’s pretty much feeling guilty for something every day, isn’t it? All you can do is try to do better tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly it. You have kids, then?”

  Lock shook his head and looked down. “No.”

  She walked to the loveseat, picked up the clipboard next to him, and sat down. She put the clipboard on his lap. Her bare leg brushed the material of his suit. She smelled of something wonderful.

  He stood up, suddenly uncomfortable and feeling like a jerk. This is what he had wanted, but it was too soon. The children came first. What if he met Natalie’s husband and he turned out to be a good father? He didn’t think she would lie about it, but every divorce had two sides. He couldn’t start something with Natalie and still stay objective about what to put in his report.

  She looked hurt, and he searched for the right thing to say. His eyes fell on the tree in the back yard. “Can I ask you a favor? Can I see the tree in your yard?”

  She looked confused. “The albino? Why?”

  “It’s a hobby. Like bird-watching. It looks like a redwood, but they don’t grow around here.”

  “Lock, if you don’t think I’m…I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You just looked so sad.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s not that. You’re amazing. But I can’t think about that and do my job, too.”

  “Rain check, then?”

  “Rain check.” He smiled.

  Her expression brightened, and she said, “Come on out back, then.”

  He followed her to the tree, trying to feel good about doing the right thing, but it was hard. She said, “You’re right, the coast redwoods don’t do well in cold places. This one’s a dawn redwood, from China originally. Metasequoia glyptostroboides.” She pronounced the name carefully. Now he was impressed.

  “Not giganteum or sempervirens,” Lock said. “I should have guessed that. How did it get this big, though? It has to be over a hundred years old, but with the white needles—”

  “I know,” she said, an angry frown creasing her brow. “It was so unique, I looked it up. The parent tree used to be right there.” She pointed, and Lock saw a low mound on the lawn where the stump must have been ground out. “A branch from the other tree fell and hit the house, and Witt decided to cut the whole tree down. He did it out of spite.”

  “Jesus,” Lock said. “Does he know that this one’s going to die as a result?”

  “I told him, and the tree guys told him, but Witt didn’t care.”

  “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” Lock said, shaking his head.

  “Harder to imagine havi
ng a reasonable conversation with him now, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. A lot harder.” He took out his phone and walked around the tree, taking over a dozen pictures.

  Lock started his car and pulled out onto the country road. On the way back to the office, Lock thought about Natalie, about the tree, and about a look she had given him that reminded him of an old girlfriend. It was a look of determination—a small frown followed by a forced smile, the conscious decision to make the best of things. It was exactly what Dominique did when faced with life’s larger difficulties.

  When he was about thirty and still teaching elementary school in Philadelphia, Lock had been frantically in love with Dominique. It wasn’t that she and Natalie looked alike, but he was starting to see they had many of the same qualities. Dominique had been a ballerina, and Natalie was a yoga practitioner, and their bodies were very alike. And Dominique’s interest in him—what ballerina dated a teacher when she could be dating models?—gave him a similar feeling, too. Natalie could have anyone, so why me? She tried the rich guy, and that didn’t work out, he told himself. And maybe it’ll just be a thing so she can forget Witt. Maybe afterwards she’ll find someone who can give her another big house. Even so, he looked forward to seeing her again. He admitted he was hooked now. As long as she was interested in him, he’d keep looking for excuses to see her. It had been the same with Dominique when he’d met her.

  Her divorce was almost settled then, and when it was finalized, they agreed that they would live together in his apartment. It was big enough for three, and they had big, beautiful plans for their lives together.

  Lock had experienced lust at first sight, and he had to admit that might have been what was happening with Natalie. But with Dominique, it had been love and devotion at first sight.

  Dominique’s ex, Timothy—who had walked out on her in her second trimester—had worked hard during the divorce to make her life miserable. He perjured himself repeatedly in custody hearings, claiming she was an unfit parent. He had staged photos of her medicine cabinet to give the appearance that she was a prescription pill addict. In reality, Timothy was the addict, and he couldn’t be trusted to care for little Hannah, who was eighteen months old by the time the hearings took place. Dominique forgave him, even while he continued to undermine her parental rights. Lock could never understand her unconditional compassion for Timothy, and everyone else for that matter, but that was one of the things he loved so much about her.

  The family court judge wasn’t buying the contrived evidence and gave Timothy a hard time, punitively limiting his time with Hannah to supervised visitation for four hours once a week. The custody order was fantastic news to Lock. Timothy slouched in his chair and didn’t seem to give a shit either way.

  As they had grown closer and more in love, it was Lock, not Timothy, who had taken Dominique to her OB/GYN appointments and who’d spent hours rubbing cocoa butter on her bulging belly to help reduce the severity of the inevitable stretch marks. The second or third word Hannah had learned to speak was “Dada,” and she used it in reference to Lock. Meanwhile, Timothy failed to show up for many of his visitation sessions. He didn’t know his daughter. Lock was pleased about that, but it didn’t really matter. Hannah regarded him as her father, and he loved her as his own child.

  The three of them lived together happily for over a year when Dominique was struck and killed by a drunk delivery truck driver on Market Street in center city Philadelphia.

  Each night during the week that followed, Lock rocked Hannah in his arms and sobbed them both to sleep.

  Before Dominique was even buried, Timothy had found a new lawyer who obtained an emergency custody hearing. A different judge presided, and without paying much attention to expert witness testimony about Lock’s strong paternal relationship with Hannah and their profound emotional bond, the judge ordered that Timothy would, by law, become the infant’s sole custodian as Hannah’s only living biological parent. Upon hearing the ruling, Timothy looked across the courtroom, grinned, and gave Lock the finger.

  He saw to it that Lock would never see Hannah again, and Lock never did.

  Lock thought about Witt, a man who would cut down a tree to spite his wife. A man like that would do exactly what Timothy had done—or worse.

  6

  Natalie, Witt, Edwina, and Dahlia sat at the breakfast table. Dahlia flailed in a highchair. Edwina plucked pieces of alphabet cereal from her bowl and used them to spell words on her napkin.

  Natalie served her husband his breakfast of eggs and whole wheat toast and tended to the kids. She forced herself to put her hand on Witt’s back in a cynical attempt to display affection. He didn’t acknowledge the caress, too absorbed in the morning newspaper to notice or care.

  “Don’t count on me for dinner tonight,” he said. “I’ll be in Harrisburg. If my meeting runs too late, I may stay overnight. If I’m not home by ten o’clock, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “What about the people from the county? They’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

  “Screw them. Reschedule it.” Witt folded the paper and set it on the table. He glanced at his watch. “Isn’t there something at the girls’ school this morning?” he asked. “What time does the driver pick them up?” His tone was more of a complaint than a question.

  “Eight,” Natalie said. He wasn’t really interested in the girls. He just liked to find fault.

  “He’s always in my way whenever I try to back out of the garage.”

  “You could leave now,” she said.

  “And I might have to fly to Sacramento this weekend. I don’t know yet.”

  He pays so little attention to me that he doesn’t even notice when I’m being a bitch, she thought.

  Witt took a quick swipe at his face with a paper napkin, dropped it on the table, and then rose and left the room. He didn’t say goodbye. A minute later, Natalie heard the garage door clank open and Witt’s car drive off.

  Lock had just sat down at his desk when Natalie called.

  “Good morning, Lock,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s me.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Mannheim. What can’t wait until seven thirty?”

  “It’s okay, I know you’re at work. I need to see you,” she said.

  “That’s what you said yesterday.” Lock tapped the eraser end of a pencil against the phone.

  “I meant it then, and I mean it now,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I have a busy morning.”

  “Taking care of someone else’s kids.”

  “That’s what I do,” he said, lowering his voice. No one was in the cubicles nearby, but he had to be careful. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about your kids.”

  “What if I tell you I’m beating my children with a belt? Would you come over then?”

  He could hear her smiling and he laughed. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said.

  “Wait,” she said. “Witt’s going out of town, and he’s probably not going to be back tonight.”

  “Did you—?”

  “I told him it was important. He said, ‘Screw them.’”

  “Charming,” Lock said. “He’s going out of town? Give me his cell phone number.”

  Natalie recited the number. Lock wrote it down and said, “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  He called her back ten minutes later. “He let it go to voicemail,” he said. “I left a message saying that this is serious business and if he stands me up again, I’m going to get the police involved. I told him he has until the end of the day to return my call and make another appointment. I think I’ll hear from him.”

  “Yes, probably,” she said. “You’re getting to see what a sweetheart he is.”

  “Yeah, I think I have a pretty good sense of him now. I’ll call you when I hear.”

  “Thanks, Lock.”

  “L
ook for a lawyer, okay? For a case like this, I’m sure you can find someone who’ll take it without getting paid up front.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that. Otherwise I’m going to end up like that tree,” she said.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Lock said.

  After lunch, Lock’s desk phone rang again.

  “Lochlan Gilkenney.”

  “Mr. Gilkenney. This is Wittley Mannheim. First, let me apologize for having to reschedule our meeting. Completely unavoidable. Business crisis that’s getting worse by the minute. Now, it appears that I’ll be out of town for an entire week, but I am anxious to meet with you and set the record straight. Any chance we can do this by phone? I could do it today by phone, or even right now, if possible.”

  “It’s not possible,” Lock said. Mannheim sounded a little too slick, a little too ingratiating. So far, there was nothing to suggest he wasn’t exactly as Natalie had portrayed him. “We need to see you in person, in your home environment, together with your wife and daughters.”

  “You came on a little strong with the police threat, Mr. Gilkenney. Let me assure you, I am taking this seriously. It’s just that I can’t be available for the interview.”

  “According to Mrs. Mannheim, you’re not taking this seriously at all.”

  “You’ll soon learn to take anything Natalie says with several tons of salt,” said Mannheim. “Here’s an example—I understand you suspect that I or my attorney submitted an anonymous report to your office. Is that correct?”

  “Mr. Manheim, I can’t possibly form an opinion about what is going on with the information I have right now. That’s why this meeting is so important.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes, and I’ll tell you what’s really going on—Natalie sent you that report. I can’t prove it, but it’s right up her alley. She does something wrong and then blames me. She cheated on me and broke my heart, but to hear her tell it, I practically forced her legs apart myself for that little bastard boyfriend of hers.”

  “Okay, that’s enough, Mr. Mannheim.” Lock reached across the desk for his appointment book and opened it. “When is the absolute soonest you’ll be available to meet?”